Jia Zhangke Explains Why Censors Are Scared of His Award-Winning Film

Commercial prospects for a critically acclaimed Chinese film inspired by the country’s most popular social media service are, like the service itself, slowly suffocating under the weight of censorship.

“A Touch of Sin” a meditation on modern violence by Chinese indie master Jia Zhangke, is the most globally celebrated Chinese film in recent memory. It won best screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival last year, has charmed critics and rates a robust 92% on Rotten Tomatoes. Desire to see the film in Taiwan was so strong that local distributors set up a mini-festival , which kicked off last week, to help it get around local import quotas.

But hopes are fading that it will ever be shown in mainland China.

“In theory, it will definitely show. In reality? I talk to [film regulators] basically once every two weeks,” Mr. Jia told China Real Time in a recent interview. He said the film had been basically approved by censors months ago but was still awaiting a final OK. “The official side is a little anxious. [They think] maybe the audience won’t be able to take it. Maybe there will be negative reactions.”

China’s film regulator, the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television, didn’t respond to requests for comment.

“A Touch of Sin” tells the stories of four people—a villager locked in struggle with corrupt officials and businessmen; a migrant who returns home and ends up hunting the local wealthy; a sauna receptionist who is assaulted by a client; and an unhappy factory worker—all of whom crack under the pressure of injustice and indifference.  It’s unusually blunt fare for a Chinese film based largely on real-life stories that spread on Sina Weibo, the popular microblogging platform that has come to serve as both a virtual town square and an alternative, less tightly managed news source.

Reading Weibo, Mr. Jia said, made him realize that violence wasn’t an occasional misfortune visited on an unlucky few, but a fundamental thread running through Chinese society and culture. “In Chinese culture, violence is always used to solve problems,” he said, citing Mao Zedong’s famous adage that “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

“The potential for violence lurks in everyone. It’s just that people manage to control themselves,” he added. “It’s difficult to discuss. Chinese culture doesn’t discuss it.”

Weibo provides one platform for that sort of discussion, according to Mr. Jia, but he said stricter controls introduced by the government last year  have robbed the site of much of its vitality. “Thinking and debating are extremely limited in Chinese society. We don’t have that tradition,” he said. “Weibo was nurturing the tradition in us. It’s a shame that process has been cut off.”

The director dismissed as “naïve” the argument, often put forth by censors, that Chinese people need to be protected from reality online and in the cinema because it might lead to social disorder.  “Life can’t be full of happiness. Culture ought to have a certain load-bearing capacity,” he said

“Touch of Sin” investors may not care whether censors ever decide Chinese audiences are mature enough to see it. Although Mr. Jia has tried to protect the film from piracy by keeping tight control over copies (he refused CRT’s request for a DVD), a pirated version leaked online at the end of February. In a Weibo post, the director apologized to his partners in the film and said his production company would compensate them for loss of potential box-office revenues.

Despite the setbacks, Mr. Jia doesn’t plan to stop exploring violence. His next project, written in collaboration with Nanjing-based novelist and poet Han Dong, is a martial-arts film set at the end of the Qing Dynasty scheduled to start shooting in September.

“It’s about intellectuals who have nowhere to go after the imperial examination system is scrapped,” he said. “People have advised me to shoot a film that ends with the world getting better. It’s such a strange suggestion. I like to shoot the rain. Why do you want me to shoot the sun coming up? That’s a completely different thing.”